House Approves Budget With Deeper Cuts In Spending and Taxes Than in 1997 Deal

The House narrowly approved a plan today to cut taxes and spending far more deeply than last year's bipartisan balanced budget deal. The move put Republicans on another ideological collision course with the White House over the size and role of the Federal Government.

Despite the defection of nine moderates unwilling to support spending reductions of the magnitude called for in the budget outline, the Republican leadership succeeded in pushing the measure through by a 216 to 204 vote after a contentious debate and intense arm-twisting.

The House plan calls for about $100 billion in tax cuts in the next five years, offset by spending cuts of the same amount. The primary tax cut would be a reduction in the so-called marriage penalty, the provision in the tax code that requires many two-income couples to pay more than they would if they were single.

The plan must be reconciled with a version passed by the Senate that calls for $30 billion in tax cuts and keeps spending largely on the path agreed to by Congress and President Clinton in last year's balanced budget deal. Even after the House and Senate have resolved their differences, the resulting budget plan will not become law but rather will serve as a general guide for drafting spending and tax bills.

The House decided today to increase military spending slightly before accounting for inflation, but to reduce domestic spending substantially. The plan did not specify what programs would be cut from the budget, which will total $1.7 trillion next year, and postponed most of the reductions until later years.

Speaker Newt Gingrich, who worked the House floor until the final moments to insure that wavering moderates voted ''yes,'' said it was clear that the House would have to move in the Senate's direction, diluting somewhat the party's ideological message. House members were also under pressure from many governors to soften provisions that would cut promised welfare block grants to the states.

''We'll be maybe slightly less conservative by the time we're done with the Senate,'' Mr. Gingrich said after the vote. ''The Senate will be a good bit more conservative by the time they're done with us.''

But a split-the-difference compromise with the Senate, yielding tax and spending cuts of about $60 billion over the next five years, would put the Republicans into a potentially bruising fight with the White House and Congressional Democrats heading into the fall election campaign.

Despite the prospect of huge budget surpluses for years to come, the two parties were having much the same argument they had two years ago when they expected deficits as far as the eye could see.

In his budget proposal early this year, Mr. Clinton called for more than $100 billion of new spending programs in education, child care and health care, paid for in part by revenues that the White House hopes will be generated by anti-smoking legislation that may pass Congress. Mr. Clinton's budget called for $20 billion of narrowly specified tax cuts.

''After a tough, tight and successful balanced budget plan that is clearly working, this plan reflects an arbitrary desire to cut key areas like education, health care and the environment with little if any analysis of what could really be negative impacts on key priorities,'' Gene Sperling, the White House economic policy adviser, said of the House proposal.

Moreover, Democratic strategists said, today's vote could give Democrats potent ammunition in their effort to win back control of the House by putting some moderate Republicans in crucial districts on record as favoring what their Democratic opponents in the mid-term elections will portray as extreme cuts.

Still, conservative Republicans seemed to be spoiling for another ideological fight. After having seen their fervor for smaller Government dissipate last year under pressure to reach a budget-balancing compromise with Mr. Clinton, Mr. Gingrich and his lieutenants were eager to reassert their conservative credentials before the elections.

''We don't want to forget the reason people sent us here,'' said Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio, the chairman of the Budget Committee and the main author of the Republican plan. ''We came to make the Government budget smaller and the family budget bigger.''

Mr. Kasich said the spending cuts in his plan amounted to ''a penny on the dollar'' and were essential to break Washington's tax-and-spend culture.

But Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee, said the proposed cuts would fall almost entirely on social programs.

And Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the Democratic leader, said the Republican budget was a replay of the 1995 plan that led to a showdown with Mr. Clinton and a shutdown of the Federal Government. The Republican proposals, Mr. Gephardt said, were ''expired milk poured into new cartons.''

The most conservative Republicans had pressed for $150 billion in tax and spending cuts. Although the Republican leadership came up with the needed votes, some moderates said they were voting for the plan only reluctantly, fearing that the combination of big tax cuts and unspecified future spending reductions imposed too much of a strain on legitimate Government programs and risked the nation's newfound fiscal health.

''It's like taking out a 30-day note to pay for your dream house that you want to live in for the rest of your life,'' said Representative Amo Houghton, Republican of New York.

In the floor debate, Mr. Gingrich appealed to party loyalty and warned potential dissidents not to distance themselves from the party's accomplishments of the last few years.

''If you vote against the Kasich budget, you're voting against the team that reformed welfare, the team that cut taxes, the team that balanced the budget, the team that brought discretionary spending under control,'' he said. ''And I think that's wrong.''